Friday Feedback 2/11/22 (my latest, new releases, etc)
Thoughts on creativity, sports fandom + new titles from Roberta Flack, Voivod, Author & Punisher, Trupa Trupa, Dropper, We Are Joiners, Joywave, and Sofiane Pamart.
My latest…
If there’s one single idea of mine that I would most like to see spread far and wide, it’s that artists do themselves harm when they hope for everyone they encounter to like their work. To all creative people, I offer this: You are not a missionary — you’re a courier. It’s not your actually part of the job to win anyone over. It’s simply your job to get your work in front of those who have it in them to like it. I wrote about this at length here.
And, as a longtime sportstalk junkie, I'm very pleased to bring you my first-ever sports piece — a love letter to the Buffalo Bills and a meditation on why we watch sports in spite of how much it can hurt. I actually explored the idea that we gain something even when it does hurt. I’m speaking from recent experience, because I’ve never felt so much admiration for a team as I felt for the Bills after their latest loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL playoffs, which I wrote about for FanSided.
There’s something I only hinted at it in the piece, because it occurred to me afterwards: I wonder if deep down all athletes believe in fate, or at least something larger than themselves that guides the outcomes of the games. In that light, playing a sport is like staring in the face of a much more powerful force and saying “I’m going to give it my all and go for the gold anyway — and if I go down in flames, then so be it.” There’s something so noble and inspiring and beautiful about that…
Thoughts on some music releases out today:
Roberta Flack — Bustin’ Loose soundtrack reissue (Geffen/UMe)
Just two months ago, I raved about the 50th-anniversary reissue of Roberta Flack’s debut album First Take, which was recorded over the course of just three days in February of 1969. The new reissue of her long out-of-print soundtrack for the classic 1981 Richard Pryor-Cicely Tyson comedy Bustin’ Loose only further drives home what a musical giant Flack is. Given the warp-speed advancements that took place in R&B between ‘69 and ‘81, it makes sense that the smooth “eletric modern soul” style of Bustin’ Loose might as well be a galaxy away from the cutting-edge jazz / folk / soul hybrid Flack forged on her debut alongside jazz icon Les McCann, who can be heard saying “she is music” on the First Take bonus disc.
With Bustin’ Loose, Flack once again showed an uncanny ability to straddle the established sounds of the era while pointing ahead to what was coming down the pike — and she does so with an impeccable elegance that threads both records together. (Her version of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” recorded as an outtake during the making of her 1971 Quiet Fire album, saw the light of day in 2021 and was included as part of the special Record Story Day compilation Songs for You, Vol. 1.) The same way that First Take sat at the cusp between the revolutionary fire of the ‘60s and the radio-friendly songcraft of the ‘70s, Bustin’ Loose shimmers with a coating of disco-era/quiet storm polish while introducing the world to Luther Vandross, who would soon grow into an avatar of a whole new breed of R&B.
Writing in 2020, NPR columnist Ann Powers observed that “Flack's presence looms over both R&B and indie ‘bedroom’ pop as if she were one of the astral beings in Ava DuVernay's version of A Wrinkle In Time.” I love that description, but any which way you slice it, Flack certainly looms…
Voivod — Syncrho Anarchy (Century Media)
Okay, LOTS to say here. For one, I have a feature story coming up soon, and will be releasing over three hours’ worth of interview audio to go along with it.
Hands-down one of the most unique bands in the history of metal, Voivod were an important part of the first-wave thrash vanguard alongside Metallica, Slayer, Celtic Frost, Anthrax, etc. They were also >huge< in my personal development as a listener.
Crucially, their origins in a remote industrial city in northern Quebec played a central part in the mind-bending sci-fi imagery that became their trademark. The Voivod, for those who don’t know, is a cybernetic vampire creature that travels in space, nukes entire planets, ventures into parallel universes, etc. On one of their albums (1988’s Dimension Hatröss), the creature enters a particle accelerator and ends up in a micro-universe surveying the various civilizations that have developed there. On another album (1998’s Phobos), it wakes up 6,000 years later in the same microverse after spending all that time in a catalepsy state...
Stay tuned!
And a few more…
Author & Punisher — Krüller (Relapse)
Punishing and gorgeous in equal measure, this is atmospheric industrial metal made by a musician/mechanical engineer (Tristan Shone) who builds actual machines to use as instruments.
Trupa Trupa — B FLAT A (self-released)
Fronted by acclaimed poet Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, this quartet from Gdańsk, Poland offers up a modern take on post-punk and art rock that lands somewhere between Wire, Swans, Fugazi, and Uzeda but with a real taste for sweet Beatles-influenced melodies. B FLAT A is being described by the band as a reflection of outward decay (in Kwiatkowski’s words, “the wasteland of human nature where hatred and genocide are not just distant reverberations of Central European history but still resonate in contemporary reality”) but to me it feels more like the sound of what gets stirred up when one confronts the internal residue of creeping dystopic dread.
Dropper — Don’t Talk to Me (self-released)
The debut from Dropper, a quartet led by singer/multi-instrumentalist Andrea Scanniello, is described by the band as music for “people who have worked in the service industry too long and become curmudgeons at the ripe old age of 26. People who are lonely yet want to be left alone. People who drink because they are sad but also sad because they drink. Bisexuals with crumbs in their bed. Optimistic pessimists. Those with seasonal allergies. But overwhelmingly for people who, in lieu of being crushed by the eternal weight of existence, choose to scream internally with a smile upon their face.”
We Are Joiners — “Liquorice” single (Totally Real Records)
I don’t know if any other band is keeping the fires burning for lo-fi rock with as much verve as Netherlands outfit We Are Joiners. I’m sure there are many artists putting out great homemade music — I won’t claim to be able to keep up — but this is one that consistently charms me, and their drive to keep putting out music is really infectious. There’s no YouTube clip for any of the songs on this new single, but here’s another clip from a previous release from just a few days ago!
Joywave — Cleanse (Cultco/Hollywood Records)
”One of my first jobs ever,” explains Joywave frontman/mastermind Daniel Armbruster via press release, “was at a car wash.” This early work experience provides the central metaphor for how Armbruster navigated the forced pause that so many artists found themselves in over the last two years, which he describes as a “wash process” where he “watched all the dirt and mud stripped away” and emerged from it free of “a few chips I was carrying on my shoulder that I needed to let go of.” Read my review of Joywaves’s 2017 album Content here.)
Sofiane Pamart — LETTER (PIAS)
French/Moroccan Berber pianist Sofiane Pamart is a classically-trained pianist who aims to shatter the notion of classical music as an elitist artform. Pamart has taken a decidedly un-stuffy route, supplying piano for French rappers like SCH, Koba LaD, Maes, and Vald and gravitating to the world of fashion. An 18-piece gratitude suite of sorts, LETTER was directly inspired by Pamart’s recent travels in South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Plenty more where this came from, but for now, over ‘n out!
— SR-K
Dug the Pamart- thanks for that. B